Keen on Cobras: Jazz owner to open Motorsports Park

Yet Larry was big into the local weekend drag-racing scene, and road racing, too, so in Gail's name they bought a '63 Falcon Sprint convertible with a 260 cubic-inch V8 — the same basic engine the early Cobras were running.

"As time went on, probably in '63 and '64, I was racing that car using some Cobra engine components. And I had friends who also had small-block Fords — 260s and 289s in Comets, Fairlanes, Falcons and Mustangs," Miller said. "So there were a few of us that were doing the most we could with Cobra camshafts and cylinder heads and exhaust systems and stuff like that — but it was still a far cry from what the Cobras were doing."

Production of the Cobras ended in March of 1967, when the last 427 Roadster was built.

"Cobras are not very aerodynamic," Miller said. "Above 170 miles an hour — 160, 170 — it's like pushing a billboard down the street."

Welcome to the world, GT40.

"They were closed cockpit, low profile — much more aerodynamic cars, with pretty much the same powertrains as the Cobras had," Miller said. "So the GT40, basically, not only was the evolution of the Cobra but the death of the Cobra."

Time passed, Shelby moved on to Mustangs, and Miller's Cobra dream slipped into a coma.

"We got married in '65 and starting having kids 14, 15 months later," he said, "so that became just something I could no longer afford, and I just put it totally aside."

Fast-forward to 1978, with Miller by now on his way to becoming what he has.

"One day, it hit me," he said. "I thought, 'I ought to see what's happened to the Cobra market.' They only had made 1,011 cars — 655 of them had the small blocks, 260s or 289s, and 356 had big blocks, 427s."

Call what happened from there fulfillment of a teenage fantasy.

"I started looking to see where they were. You never heard anything about them," Miller said. "Again, only 1,011 ever built. Who knew how many were left in existence 10 years, 11 years later?

"I found one car. They had actually become just like almost any used car. They were around, when you got looking. . . . I was in Colorado at the time. There actually, that I knew of, had been two of them in Utah. But I couldn't find either one of those, so I started watching some of the enthusiast magazines and found a few."

Going resale value at the time: About $4,000-to-$6,000.

Interested buyers at the time, however, would not have been wise to blink. Miller did, and it cost him.

He, it seems, wasn't the only one rediscovering that totally awesome ride from the '60s.